Briley and Wyer (2001) state that situational factors are of equal importance when
predicting ostensibly culture-specific norms and values. In the studies conducted by these
authors, culture-related knowledge structures (as opposed to situation-triggered cognition)
were only activated when respondents had to give reasons for their choices. It is revealed
that mediating situational factors automatically influence behaviour (e.g. action-plans,
scripts) as well as the accessibility of culture-related cognition when people enter situations
that they are already familiar with. In times of growing societal dynamics and cultural
change, differences specific to the situation might in fact account for research results that
were previously traced back to culture specifics (Conway, Schaller, Tweed, & Hallett,
2001). Yet, for several reasons these results do not contradict the notion that culture is an
important variable. To begin with, the studies by Briley and Wyer (2001) suffer from severe
methodological shortcomings (e.g. no control group is used, cultural dimensions yielded in a
confirmatory factor analysis only explain 38% of the variance, results of path-analysis are
not convincing). Further, the fact that individualism and collectivism are not clearly
distinguishing culture-specific behaviour in these studies shows that the individualismcollectivism
dimension might be “more highly interrelated in the minds of cross-cultural
theorists and researchers than they are in the minds of the individuals being investigated”
(Briley & Wyer, 2001, p. 206).